I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer system, and more particularly, to a system in a personal computer (PC) for providing to the PC the configuration (CFG) of a mass storage device. II. Related Art
As the PC industry has evolved, it has become necessary to more readily manipulate large quantities of data in PCs, which have been progressively used more for compute-intensive applications. These applications include, for example, high resolution graphics displays, high performance computer automated design (CAD) workstations, high speed local area networks (LAN), and recently the new Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA) peripherals which are being developed to handle 32-bit burst data transfers at up to 33 megabytes per second.
A variety of mass storage peripherals have been developed to meet the needs of the PC industry. Mass storage peripherals include for example flexible (floppy) disks, hard disks, and tape drives. One of the most commonly used mass storage peripherals is the hard disk. The hard disk is a preferred device because of its nonvolatile storage space and its high storage capacity.
The intense development effort in the PC industry has provided faster hard disks with higher and higher data storage capacities. As a result, many different types of hard disks exist in the marketplace with many different operating characteristics, or "configurations."
In order for a mass storage peripheral, such as a hard disk, to be used in a PC, the PC must know the configuration information regarding the peripheral in order to interact with and properly access it. More specifically, peripheral devices are usually controlled by a local hardware device known as a controller. Upon receipt of signals from the central processing unit, or in this case a microprocessor, the controller performs the data transfers between the peripheral and the microprocessor. These controllers must be aware of the specific configuration in order to generate proper control signals for the peripheral. Furthermore, the central processing unit (CPU) and the Basic Input Output System (BIOS) of the PC must know the peripheral configuration to properly allocate resources and interact with the peripheral.
With regard to hard disks, a de facto industry standard has developed in the PC industry to deal with identifying the many varieties. The configuration of most conventional hard disks can be described with a "type." A type comprises 16 bytes of information that describes the configuration of the hard disk.
Traditionally, when a hard disk is installed in a PC, the user is required to manually enter the "type" corresponding to the hard disk into the PC keyboard in order to apprise the PC of the configuration. This process results in system malfunctions due to human error in entering the technical information as well as the need for the user to become intimately familiar with the hard disk specifications and computer etiquette.